short

As some of you may have guessed from the title of my blog, I’m not very tall – 5′ 4″ to be precise. The reason for this is I have short legs – 28″ or around 71cm. Now I have happily negotiated my way through life without this really being an issue, but I’ve been looking at new bikes recently and have run into a big issue – they’re too big!

This never used to be an issue, but standover heights on new bikes seem to be every increasing – especially on bikes with the new larger wheel sizes and full suspension bikes.

Ok, I know I’m short, but I can’t be an anomaly of nature. I can buy trousers easily enough – a “short” trouser fits me just fine and is catered to my inside leg, so why are cycle manufacturers now denying the existence of short men?
(to be fair, women seem much better catered for).

In my quest to find a new bike I have found it very hard to find a full suspension bike that I can actually stand astride, let alone have any clearance of the top tube. I have yet to find a 29″er that I can touch the floor from the top tube, which crazily rules out entire manufacturers – Specialized to name and shame an example – or entire product lines – Trek’s Fuel EX range as another example. How heightest is that?!
“Can I interest you in a bike sir? Oh no sorry, according to our design team, men of your height don’t exist, so you can’t have a mountain bike”.

Fortunately there are one or two manufacturers who appear to have not quite given up on the vertically challenged and in case anyone else is in the same predicament, I decided to compile a list of all these bikes that cater for us shorties.

It’s called The Shortlist and can be found here. Appropriately it’s not very long at the moment, but I’d love to hear from people if they have any suggestions – especially manufacturers. You can drop me your suggestions here.

Link – The Shortlist